Fencer: Your response to my post is troubling. Rather than address the substance of my remarks, you've resorted to an unprovoked ad hominem argument. Nevertheless, I will reply, at least this once. I will try to keep the discussion civil, and I hope you will do the same in the future.

You made four statements about me:

• "never spent a cent to support the site"
  This is true. But it does not negate the legitimacy of my opinions, nor is it cause for you to complain. You have offered a product for sale, but that does not obligate anyone to purchase it. Individuals will purchase it or not, as they see fit. Just as BrainKing is yours to develop as you will, my money is mine to spend as I will. (If I remember correctly, you yourself have stated more than once, although not recently, that you don't expect every user to buy a membership.) At present, I do not consider BrainKing membership to be worth the price. I have fairly concrete thoughts about what changes might make me reconsider; if you're interested, I can share them with you at another time.


• "uses its services for free"
  This also is true, and this also does not give you cause to complain. You have chosen to make BrainKing available, with some limitations, at no charge. If you don't want anyone to use BK for free, all you have to do is disallow it by discontinuing the Pawn membership level. It is your site, and you can grant or deny access as you please. As long as you permit Pawns to use the site without paying, it is inappropriate to criticize them for doing so.


• "has no idea about the work behind it"
  This is false. Of course I am not privy to every detail, but I certainly recognize that creating BrainKing from scratch and developing it into its current form has required a monumental amount of labor -- from designing the initial concept and structure, to painstakingly writing and debugging many thousands of lines of code, to dealing with endless demands from very opinionated users. Perhaps I don't agree with every decision you've made along the way, but that does not mean I think your role is easy.


• "has absolutely no idea about the real purpose of all this"
  Well, if you're not making money from the ads, then what is their purpose? Please enlighten us.

BrainKing has a lot of potential. I would very much like to see it become the kind of gaming site that I could pay for. When I first joined in 2005, that seemed like a possibility. Now it seems unlikely. But you may yet surprise me. You've done so before.

King Reza: Nevertheless, Radiant2007 :-) has a valid point. Ads such as the one she described are inconsistent with the spirit of General Guideline #3. Perhaps you are not offended by the ads since you can turn them off, but that does not make Radiant's position unreasonable. Also note that most users do not have the option to disable ads. The analogy with an ostrich burying its head in the sand is apt.

A year or two ago, Fencer was working hard to make BrainKing into a great gaming site, and making admirable progress. But for several months now there has been noticeably less emphasis on improving the quality of the gaming experience. Instead, Fencer seems to be focusing much more on finding ways to increase revenue, through tasteless ads and other things unrelated to BrainKing's main purpose as a gaming site. He should expect to lose some users.

KotDB: Oops. Sorry about the runaway italics.

Here's an interesting thought: If pawns were allowed to edit their posts, then all the paying members wouldn't have to suffer through my incorrect formatting.

AbigailII: I agree that including DST conventions in the time zone setting would be a nice feature. And it's probably true that some users would be confused and complain. But then some users are already confused and complaining.

But as I see it, the absence of this feature is not the main problem. The main problem is the mismatch between the interface and the functionality of BK's time zone setting. The various options on the Settings page are all described as fixed offsets from GMT, but they are implemented</a> as fixed offsets from Czech time. Thus, whenever the Czech Republic is on summer time, what you set is not what you get.

alanback: The time is currently displayed correctly according to your settings. For example, if you live in the Pacific time zone, Pacific Standard Time (PST) is GMT-8 and Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) is GMT-7. So if you want BrainKing to display PDT, you should have your time zone set to GMT-7.

The bug will appear this coming weekend, when the Czech Republic shifts to summer time and Fencer attempts to redefine Greenwich Mean Time.

Fencer: Yes, I know your answer. But your answer is wrong. If you want my money, make the site better overall; don't make it worse for Pawns.

emmett: I have a hard time believing that the increasingly obtrusive advertising is for my own good.

Fencer: And more than four years later, it's still a good idea. ;)

fakarten: And yet Mr. Kafka has finished 6 rated games of chess without acquiring a rating. Very ... mysterious.

alanback: Just trying to help. :)

Unfortunately it's all rather jumbled on BrainKing. When the Czech Republic is on CEST, what BK falsely calls "GMT" is actually GMT+1.

Pedro Martínez: Central European Time is GMT+1. Central European Summer Time is GMT+2.

Actually, that should probably be UTC+1 and UTC+2, but who's counting?

Fencer: From what I've seen, Yahoo! doesn't do a very good job of selecting important news pertaining to a given country. The results tend to be very redundant and USA-centric. And for many countries, seven or eight of the ten articles are reports of sports results. Eight of these appear to be nearly identical, and five of these have virtually nothing to do with Bavaria.

I wouldn't mind having a world news link in the menu column at the side of the screen, or a link to each country's news on the list of players from that country. But why in the middle of a game page? There, it's just a piece of clutter that has nothing to do with the game.

Fencer: So BrainKing is a news site now? I have other, more useful, sources for news, and I think the flags look better without this "news" link. Can we have the option not to show it?

MAX MAXIMUS: Someone else makes your moves for you?! Do you realize that this is a blatant violation of General Guideline #2? Perhaps you should examine your own behavior before you accuse others of cheating.

gambler104: I guess there's no harm in revealing it now. It's nothing so exotic as some of the guesses I've seen. Just pick one post each hour and read it on every board.

I'm glad to see that the points for reading have been replaced by points for winning. Now I can stop "reading"! And I agree that it's much better to reward people for playing than for lurking.

Of course I can't make enough moves to stand a chance under this new system, but that's all right. Good luck to all honest competitors.

Fencer: I think there's still a bug. I've acquired 242 board points in the past 30 minutes.

Jason: It's not only your opinion. I'm all for giving out rook memberships as prizes, but competitive discussion-board reading seems like a rather strange criterion.

As for the rest, I suspect we're talking about different things. But I'll leave it at that.

Jason: No, it hasn't. I've seen only hints, questions, and speculation, mostly baseless and incorrect.

I've just discovered that it is possible to receive points many times for reading the same posts. Between 200 and 300 of my points are the result of this experiment and should be removed from my score. But it's unlikely to matter, because I intend to bow out of the competition. I have neither the time nor the patience to keep up this craziness for a month, and I couldn't accept a prize in good conscience if I won by exploiting such a loophole.

And before anyone asks: No. Unless your name is Fencer, I will not tell you how.

plaintiger: That's not a bug. An arrow pointing upward indicates that the list is sorted in ascending order, which in this case means that the earliest dates are shown first.

Czuch Chuckers: Don't ask me. I'm just a Pawn. I don't set policy, and I didn't choose the title of this thread. But it may be worth noting that your example was profane, while the present case is merely vulgar.

Chicago Bulls: That's where I thought it would be, but sadly, it's not there. Ah, well.

Chicago Bulls: This sounds like a very useful feature, but I can't find it anywhere. Is it for paying members only, or am I looking only in the wrong places?

Having just posted a redundant reply on another board, I'm curious about the possibility of editing or removing one's own posts. I sometimes see posts flagged as modified, but I haven't found any way to do this. Is this another feature which is only available to paying members?